<<
your definition seems at odds with the word "portions" in the section 8 requirement to mark the "portions of your work".
>>
I _NEVER_ said that OGC is everything in a covered product. I said it was everything in a covered product that is not PI.
I'm reading from the definitions section of the license, David. That's where I got my interpretation. It says, effectively, "OGC means any work covered by this license except the parts that are Product Identity".
Since you can have product identity in your work, you may have some portions of your work that are not OGC. Thus some portions of your covered work may be OGC and some may not be.
<<This to me means that ONLY portions (and I believe that in law a plural word like this can also mean zero or one portion) of the work need to be OGC.
>>
It can also mean "all". "Surrender the portions of your income earned illegally", could end up hitting 100% of your income if it is all earned illegally.
If you read my posts, you'll see that I believe that, provided you own 100% of the document, exactly a big fat zero percent of your work _has_ to be OGC. You might be able to release an image as 100% PI with a separate PI license so that the image can be used in OGL licensed works without the user jumping through hoops of declaring the book it's in a compilation, etc.
You are thinking that I'm saying things that I am explicitly _not_ saying. In fact, I've said things quite the opposite of what you are suggesting that I have said.
<<Open Game Content means the portions of the work that you are distributing that are clearly indicated as Open Game Content and specifically excludes Product Identity.
>>
David, the definitions section defines OGC. Not the marking section. The marking section and the definitions section interacts in certain ways. But the definitions section defines what is and is not OGC. Not the marking section.
Otherwise, why define OGC at all if the definitions section doesn't control the definition of the term?
<<I don't see where you are joining the dots to get from portions of a work with and OGL being OGC to everything except PI being OGC.>>
David, if you had a single word of PI in your work, then you wouldn't have 100% OGC. Portions of your work (in fact a monstrously large portion) would be OGC.
That it says you must mark the portions of your work as OGC says little or nothing, in my opinion, about the definition of OGC.
That's like a rule that says, if you hand write a letter, you must mark the portions of your work that you write in cursive with a green marker. If you wrote nothing in cursive you'd mark nothing. If you wrote it all in cursive, you would mark it all. That you must mark it if it is cursive, does not dictate whether you will or will not be writing in cursive.
Similarly, that you must mark something that is OGC is not defining the sum total of everything that must be OGC. As a practical matter, since everything that's OGC must be marked as OGC, what is OGC and what is marked will coincide 100% if you handle the license appropriately. However, what you MUST declare as OGC is more than what you choose to mark.
<<you are ignoring and or dismissing things people say, that work against your interpretation without fully justifying why their logic fails and yours does not.
>>
I tend to be pretty specific about why I agree or disagree with points.
The word "portions" does not suggest what is and is not OGC. It is entirely consistent with my own reading of the license definitions. It would have been cleaner if had said, "any and all parts", but "portions" serves a similar purpose.
<< OGC being: "all game mechanics plus all work covered by the license minus anything declared as PI", >>
Um... If "all work covered by the license minus PI is OGC", then if you don't own the mechanics and can't PI them, then they'd be OGC'd under the phrase "all work covered by the license minus anything declared as PI". The mechanics line woud be redundant, particularly since the license says not the mechanics, but the parts of the mechanics that are not also PI are what is getting declared as OGC.
I've hardly ignored it. One dataset is a subset of the other, by my view.
<<don't just change the subject and talk about magazines.
>>
I'm not changing the subject and talking about magazines. They are just the most obvious example of a work containing works, and the example was illustrative of my point, so I used it.
Since individual photos and pieces of artwork can be considered separate works, I see no reason that for a single book, the text couldn't be one work and the photos other separate works, and the sum total of both would be yet another encompassing work.
I think the law probably has some flexibility in this area.
<<I think the real objection to "closed content" is that people have given it a name.>>
No, my objection is in the license definitions section. I contend that so-called "closed content" exists, it just exists outside the coverage of the license. It exists in parts of your published volume that are not part of the "covered work".
<<
And the next logical leap is to say that if they didn't put "Closed Content" in the OGL then there is no "closed content".
>>
No, the next logical leap is to see how the license mandates that I divide up my work, and since any covered work minus the PI is OGC, then, by definition, a covered work = PI +OGC and nothing else. There _will_ be so-called "closed content" in some volumes that contain OGC. But those sections will be outside the scope of the license by-and-large.
<<
Stuff that is not covered by the licence is just that; stuff not covered by the licence. >>
Right, and I've been arguing that stuff that's not OGC or PI aren't covered by the license except indirectly in a few clauses (see, "in conjunction with", etc.)
<<The "work" is divided into three parts:
* OGC
*PI
* other stuff that isn't OGC or PI (things that [have] therefore *nothing* to do with the OGL)
>>
Look, your last paragraph makes my point. The parts not covered have nothing to do with the license (except for a couple of clauses). That is the sum total of my point, David.
A "covered work" is not divided into those 3 parts. It has OGC and PI. Since works may contain other works, a given work may have all 3, but any covered work within it will have only 2 of these.
<<
I don't see anything in the OGL that forbids someone from only covering half of their work (even without using PI). >>
Provided that the "covered work" can be defined as half of a given work, and thus effectively contending that there are actually multiple works between the book's covers, this is entirely consistent with what I've claimed.
Note that it's 100% of the _covered_work_ that's OGC if there is no PI. You probably have a reasonable amount of latitude about defining what is and is not the "covered work", although a judge may give you grief about trying to creatively define a "work" in such a fashion that it conflicts with notions within a given industry or with your obvious intent based on your style of presentation.
Overall, though, you probably have a ton of latitude defining a "work" and saying it is or is not "covered". However, once you have, that covered portion should contain only OGC and PI unless somebody can show me something in the definitions section which claims to the contrary (which would be fine and interesting to learn about for me).
<<You seem to be assuming that if someone uses a licence (from WotC) that it must cover all of their words.>>
I'm assuming all the stuff _covered_ by the license must be OGC and PI, which is different than saying that I feel that every word somebody writes in a volume is automatically covered.
<<the people who talk about "closed content" seem to me to have assumed that they
can use their licence on *portions* of their document and turn off the OGL for other portions >>
I'm sorry, who are you debating here? I think I've pretty clearly claimed by example that you can apply the license to portions of the document in certain circumstances. I'm not trying to be combatitive. I'm being honest. You are wildly misconstruing my points.
The reason I mentioned things like magazines, etc. is they are examples of works containing other works in so clear a fashion that I feel you would have zero problem picking and choosing between text of articles, photos, etc. in defining coverage.
I'm sort of skeptical about whether a judge is going to accept that "the covered work is everything except the third sentence on page 5", as if that is somehow outside of the work.
I find it entirely believable that some book chapters, poems, essays, character write-ups, images, etc. may all be eligible to be considered as stand-alone works which, if carved out and published separately, could be covered by the OGL, and so they can probably be marked separately as "covered" even if they appear bound between the covers of a larger work.
<<
If I'm wrong about *portions* then show me I'm wrong in nice small logical steps. Not with an example of a magazine in sub sections. Use the example given to you a while back of the alphabet. >>
I won't use the alphabet, because it's unlikely that the alphabet would be considered a "work" to begin with, particularly not strung together as a sequence of letters all in a row (instead of fancified and presented as unique artwork for each letter).
I won't use it, any more than I'd try to claim that the word "the" is a work unto itself, and try to dissect coverage to include the "t" and the "e" but not the "h".
<<
As far as I can tell this seems to be the one thing that all the OGC statements I have seen in books have not contradicted.>>
To date, I have seen no OGL covered work ever try to claim that a single continuous strings of letters could be separated into covered and non-covered portions.
I have seen books with 26 chapters try to declare specific chapters as covered and not covered. Things that have non-d20 rules, for instance, as Ryan suggested, have sometimes put the d20 conversions in a smaller covered sub-work while leaving the rest of the work outside the scope of the license.
<<
Tell me why you can use A to M and not be in breach of copyright law. >>
Because they are letters of the alphabet, and they aren't considered copyrightable. Copyright covers works, not letters or individual words or short phrases.
<<And tell me in plain English with references to the parts of the licence that allow you
to say that this is the only possible interpretation of the OGL. >>
Look, you can have any interpretation of the license you want to. Have a field day. I won't stop you. I'm just reading the definition and it says explicitly that any "work" (and work is a term of art with a fuzzy, but fairly coherent definition) covered by the license is OGC except the parts that are PI.
<<Tell us why OGC is not *parts* of a work. Tell us why you are convinced that
section 8 which has actual words [2] supporting the other side of the case does not count. >>
Um, OGC will be parts of a work in some cases. It will be 100% of a covered work if there's no PI. If there's PI, then even within a covered work there will be parts which are OGC.
Because it's not the definition of the OGC. It just tells you to mark the things that are OGC. The definition of OGC comes from the definitions section. And, as I've said, if you handle things appropriately, what you mark and what is OGC should 100% coincide. The question is more: "what do I have to mark, what is OGC?" The definitions section answers that.
<<You say "show me" to your verbal opponents, well I'm saying it back to you Lee.>>
And I've answered that to the umpteenth degree. You want me to throw out obvious examples of works and sub-works (which you either don't understand or reject) and want me to apply the OGL to a string of letters which I'm not certain can be separated internally and have the license applied to them, because the license is applied to works, not a couple letters.
Now, you can go on believing that 24 out of 26 letters in a string constitutes a "work" under U.S. copyright law. More power to you. I'm not going to dissuade you from that fact.
<<
You'll probably have a nice debate if you talk about PI or crippled content but I don't think there is anyone else out there that thinks the OGL covers everything within the covers of a book>>
Umm, and neither do I. Go back and re-read my posts instead of shaking a finger at me and telling me I believe something that patently contradicts what you claim I think.
I've said that a judge _might_ infer that your covered work = your marked OGC + your marked PI, but it's probably safer and cleaner to explicitly declare the scope of the covered work, so that it's explicit that you believe that there is a sub-work within another work that can be covered.
I have no problem with being wrong. I might learn something, and it's better to be wrong on a list than in a courtroom. The list is like a simulator. The courtroom is where your bank account could be on the line.
However, I don't think stringing together letters and claiming you can apply the license meaningfully to the alphabet is pretty sketchy. The license is applied to works. Individual PI'd terms might be a single word, etc. (as in a trademark, etc.). But the license as a whole must be applied to a work.
Lee
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